Tuesday, December 9

Scripture: When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them.” (Isaiah 41:17). 

Observation: The prophet is preaching at the tail end of the Babylonian exile or while the exiles are on the return trip home. As it was during the exodus, when some of the emancipated slaves wanted to go back to Egypt because the journey to the Promised Land was so physically demanding and involved actual thirst because of an absence of water in the desert, so it was during the trip from Babylon to Judah. Some of the emancipated exiles wanted to reverse course and go back to Babylon. The way home was no cake walk. The journey would have taken months to a year, mostly on foot, over mountains, through heat and cold, and across desert, where anyone and especially parents with young children would have worried about access to water. “Babylon wasn’t ideal,” we can imagine the parents saying, “but at least I could give my kid a glass of water before she went to bed.” Isaiah had a word for people who were understandably worried about the lack of water: when, not if, when you look for water and come up empty, God will provide. The same God who made water gush from a rock for the Israelites in the exodus is the same God who set the exiles in Babylon free. This God can be trusted to provide water in improbable places. In the prophecy, God promises to answer the exiles’ plea for water before they even ask. The people have a need, and before they go to God with their needs, God answers. This God can be trusted to hear our prayers before we ever speak them. 

Application: In the United Methodist order of worship for a Service of Death and Resurrection, there is this prayer: “O God, who have us birth, you are ever more ready to hear than we are to pray. You know our needs before we ask, and our ignorance in asking.” Lord, I believe; now help my unbelief. I believe God knows my needs before I pray for them. I believe God knows what I will pray in the future. I believe in the all-knowing of God, but I struggle with the all-providing. Like an exile worried about having enough water in the desert, I struggle with trusting God to meet my needs and those of my family. I don’t buy the argument that I need more faith. If I need more of anything, it’s surrender. I need to surrender my scarcity mentality. I need to surrender my need for control. I need to surrender the people-pleasing. I need to surrender the compulsion to feel like I’m in charge of my fate. One of my greatest needs is surrender to the God who will meet my needs.  

Prayer:  

It is not the case that you, Master of the Universe, let me face my life today with nothing.  

What you gave me to have, I allow myself to overlook:    

   Roads paved before I was born,

   Oxygen produced by the chemistry labs that are trees,

   A hand that squeezed mine before I said, “See you later.” 

   And more and more and 

I would run out of life before I listed all you give me, but I will add one more to the list:

You gave me a craving for controlling my future.

Like a nomad in the desert who hopes beyond reason that there will

   Always be enough water for my children 

   When the circumstances tell me otherwise, 

   I want to know in advance the water will always be there 

   And I want to control everything I must control for possibilities  

   To stop being possibilities and morph into certainties. 

This craving for control must come from you, O God. 

   As thirst, hunger, loneliness, and fear have good purposes and point me    

   Toward the thing I need when I lack it,

   So must this craving for control be a drive you alone put there. 

God, you knew what I needed to do before I asked.  

I need to use this craving for its intended function: to point me

   Toward surrender. 

   As all my other cravings point me to their opposite, 

   Fear to trust, loneliness to friendship, 

   Hunger to food, thirst to water,   

   So does my craving for control point me to my need for surrender.  

Lead me to satisfy my soul’s desire for surrender with more surrender.   

Lead me to open my hands to receive your enough.  

Lead me to let go of my compulsion to be captain of my fate.   

Lead me to let go of certainty and to embrace what has always been the case:    

   The raw material of the future is possibility.  

Lead to me to choose the possibilities that lead me toward becoming    

   More like You.  

For the craving beneath all my cravings is to draw closer to who you are.